From 1993 to 1997, the year before and year after Bill Bratton’s first term as NYPD Police Commissioner, there was a 1,141% increase in arrests for low-level marijuana possession, 5 a trend that would begin a period known as the “marijuana arrest crusade.” Over the next twenty years the NYPD arrested nearly 700,000 people6 for an offense that the state legislature had already decriminalized only two decades earlier.However, check this stat out from Smart-NY.com: